Trophic ecology of a Late Pleistocene early modern human from tropical Southeast Asia inferred from zinc isotopes

Tam Pà Ling, a cave site in northeastern Laos, has yielded the earliest skeletal evidence of Homo sapiens in mainland Southeast Asia. The reliance of Pleistocene humans in rainforest settings on plant or animal resources is still largely unstudied, mainly due to poor collagen preservation in fossils from tropical environments precluding stable nitrogen isotope analysis, the classical trophic level proxy. However, isotopic ratios of zinc (Zn) in bioapatite constitute a promising proxy to infer trophic and dietary information from fossil vertebrates, even under adverse tropical taphonomic conditions. Here, we analyzed the zinc isotope composition (66Zn/64Zn expressed as δ66Zn value) in the enamel of two teeth of the Late Pleistocene (63–46 ka) H. sapiens individual (TPL1) from Tam Pà Ling, as well as 76 mammal teeth from the same site and the nearby Nam Lot cave. The human individual exhibits relatively low enamel δ66Zn values (+0.24‰) consistent with an omnivorous diet, suggesting a dietary reliance on both plant and animal matter. These findings offer direct evidence of the broad utilization of resources from tropical rainforests by one of the earliest known anatomically modern humans in Southeast Asia

Cottoning on to Cotton (Gossypium Spp.) in Arabia and Africa during Antiquity

International audienceThe occurrences of cotton in texts and in the archaeological record (seeds, fibres and textiles) demonstrate the emergence of cotton production centres in north-eastern Africa and western Arabia during the 1st\textendash4th centuries AD, which is concurrent with an increase of cotton trade. These finds could correspond to any of the two Old World domestic cotton species: Gossypium arboreum L., probably domesticated in the Indus valley and traded since the 3rd millennium BC, or Gossypium herbaceum L., an African species about which very little is known, beside its presence in Nubia during Antiquity. Our paper reviews the archaeobotanical, textile and textual data from north-eastern Africa and western Arabia, with specific attention to several sites located in Central Sudan (Muweis), Lower Nubia (Qasr Ibrim), western Egypt (Kellis, Amheida) and north-western Arabia (Madâ'in Sâlih/Hegra). The intention of this review is to a) document how cotton production was integrated into agrarian and trade economies and b) examine current hypotheses regarding the diachronic distribution of the two species. The results highlight the importance of cotton in different agrosystems from the 1st\textendash2nd centuries AD. In Central Sudan, Nubia and Dakhleh oasis, cotton cultivation appeared together with other new tropical/sub-tropical crops, such as sorghum ( Sorghum bicolor) and pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum subsp. glaucum). This was not the case in north-western Arabia. It seems that cotton production occurred at first as small-scale experiments before scaling up during the 3rd century AD, in conjunction with the spread of the water-wheel in the Nile valley. Cotton in Nubia, and possibly in other neighbouring areas, probably belonged to the African species G. herbaceum, which was in all likelihood domesticated in southern regions, perhaps Ethiopia. We suggest that the increase of exchanges across the Indian Ocean during Antiquity created a favourable context for the emergence of cotton production and its relative expansion before the Islamic period